


We're Going Ghost Hunting No Matter What

by negickapologist (neganstonguething)



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: M/M, Mentions of surgery, Vomiting, gratuitously making fun of ghost adventures, honestly just shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 16:52:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12939579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neganstonguething/pseuds/negickapologist
Summary: Negan's sick as a dog on date night, and neither he nor Rick are happy about it.





	We're Going Ghost Hunting No Matter What

**Author's Note:**

> for holyjeffreydeanmorgan on Tumblr, who requested Rick taking care of a very sick Negan. This probably doesn't fit the bill exactly, but I hope you enjoy it regardless!

Friday night. Full moon. Wind is howling. Lightning flashes in the distance. It’s a solid seventy-two degrees out. Perfect weather to go out taking pictures at cemeteries and old abandoned buildings. Just the right amount of scary to generate a decent level of excitement over probably nothing.

And Negan can’t go.

And he won’t stop complaining to Rick about it.

In Negan’s defense, it had been a good date night plan for Rick and him. They had both come up with the idea in the middle of watching an episode of Ghost Adventures, while making fun of Zac Bagans acting like a giant douche in old buildings and then freaking out when the wind blew just right up the back of his shirt or a door creaked. With Carl and Judith out for the weekend with friends, the two dads had been looking forward to having a good old time goofing off and acting like they had every angry spirit from every supernatural horror movie chasing after them.

But conveniently enough, Negan woke up that Friday sicker than shit, and he hasn’t stopped bitching ever since the first time he found himself wrapped around the toilet bowl. In fact, the word ‘fuck’ is that much more poignant when it’s spoken around a fresh wave of vomit. It’s enough that Rick legitimately feels bad for his husband and doesn’t think he’s blowing it out of proportion.

Which is saying something, because Negan is literally the worst person at being sick. He’s the type of guy who damn near lost a kidney to a fall into a pile of barbed wire and didn’t blink an eye, but if he has a cough, you’d better stay as far away from his bad side as possible. He’s grumpy and irritable when he’s sick, and even his sarcasm seems to fall ill with him.

But right now, he really isn’t doing well. On the one day he’d wanted to be well above all others, he’s sicker than a damn dog.

At the very least, Rick supposes it’s easier to take care of Negan with the kids out. Especially when the guy’s as sick as he is now. Negan hasn’t been able to keep anything down all day. Even sips of water come back up half an hour later. He’s gotten to the point where he’s refusing even that much, because all he gets is a raging stomachache and to taste it coming back up moments later.

So here they are, confined to the living room couch, Rick placing a fresh liner in the trash can next to it, while episodes of Ghost Adventures drawl on almost bitterly from the television, which Negan has pleaded to be the only source of light in the visible area. Rick doesn’t mind. The only thing he does feel a little bit frustrated about right now is that he can’t get close to his husband.

At first, he avoided contact because Negan smelled strongly like vomit. But since then, he’s managed to talk the other man into a shower with a lot of coaxing and a gentle shoulder massage. The telling factor of Negan’s illness is in the fact that during the entirety of his nudity and Rick’s contact with him, he didn’t once ask for a dick to be put anywhere, except neatly tucked into his pants once he was showered and dried off.

And then, Rick started worrying he might get sick too, and the kids would be stuck to fend for themselves once they got back.

After that, he tried to throw caution to the wind, knowing full well how capable of caring for Judith Carl was, but between Negan’s constant one-on-ones with toilet bowls and trash cans and the older man’s stubborn insistence that “ _I wouldn’t wish this shit on my worst enemy, let alone the second love of my life, so get the fuck away,_ ” Rick is now stuck sitting on the recliner near the couch, waiting for the next instance in which he would be tending to another of Negan’s vomiting spells.

It’s well into evening now, and Rick is feeling so attention-starved that he himself could puke, and maybe that’s a good thing, because if he gets sick, he can do all the cuddling he wants with his husband.

But alas, Rick is a level-headed man with a mature understanding of the situation, and he therefore isn’t going to do anything stupid, and he now understands why Negan’s go-to response to frustration is to sneak into a bathroom and jerk off.

This _was_ supposed to be date night, after all.

“This fucking _blows_ …” Negan whines as he leans over the trash can once more. Rick can hear the rumble of misery as it works its way up from Negan’s stomach and comes out in the form of a painful-sounding dry heave. He winces.

“…Should we go to the ER?” Rick wonders aloud, and once Negan finishes gagging and rests back onto the couch again, he shakes his head.

“It’s just a bug,” Negan groans. “Been sick before, I know it’ll go away. I’m not fucking dying, babe.”

“You can’t keep anything down,” Rick reminds him. “And you just got sick again for no reason.”

“It hasn’t even been a day,” Negan reminds him, resting on his back with his forearm over his eyes.

“Yeah,” Rick agrees, “I know. But you’re turnin’ down even sips of water now. You’re gonna end up dehydrated.”

“I’m fine, Rick,” Negan says curtly. “Enough.”

Rick frowns, but he does as he’s told and drops the subject. His focus slips to the television, where the Ghost Adventures opening theme drones on as the next episode automatically starts playing.

Negan’s insistence to stay home falters within half an hour, when he finds himself puking up nothing again. Rick tries to ignore the sounds of his heaving, but when a hand stretches across the small gap between the couch and recliner and closes around his knee, Rick’s attention returns to Negan.

“Okay…we can go to the ER.”

\--- --- --- --- ---

As it turns out, Negan’s change of heart actually comes from a new source—a sharp pain in his side. By the time they get to the car, the man is damn near doubled over from it, cursing left and right. He’s so focused on the new symptom that he can’t really dedicate much energy to throwing up, so Rick only sees him bury his face in the sack they brought with them once during the trip to the hospital. He bites his lip, now genuinely worried.

They enter the hospital and the woman at the reception area brings a wheelchair around when she sees how Negan can’t stand up straight. Luckily for them, the emergency room isn’t super busy tonight, so they find themselves in a room and facing a doctor within ten minutes. A dose of Zofran and IV pain medication later, and Negan is being whisked away to a CT scan.

Rick doesn’t like hospitals. After having been shot and spending weeks in one, he’s never been crazy about the too-white walls and sterile smell. It reminds him of hospital food and all the nurses who tried to be polite but were just so tired from the demand of their job that they couldn’t manage much. And he spent a long-ass time in pain.

He’s not even going to try and touch on how Lori had died in this very hospital giving birth to their daughter. Had he not met Negan, he’d never have pulled through that one. Between him and Carl and all their friends and family, Rick had had a huge support system, but that hadn’t made the pain any more dull. It was their constant persistent demanding for him to work to get onto his feet—that he had kids counting on him—that eventually pulled him out of the hole that was his misery.

Two years after Lori’s death, Rick had finally decided it was time to move on. He’d jokingly told Negan one night at the bar they frequented that he was going to put himself back on the market. And Negan had joked back that they could always go on a date together. Rick had thought he was being funny, but when he’d looked up at his friend and seen something like insecurity in his eyes, he’d realized just how serious Negan was.

And falling for him had been a slippery slope. While they had spent the next three years wrapped up in one another, they’d only at the end of those three years decided it was a good idea to get married. Negan had lost his own wife six years before Rick had lost Lori, and they weren’t sure that getting married was a good idea right away. They’d talked about it a lot, but it wasn’t until they both had realized mutually that they weren’t going anywhere without the other that they finally decided to tie the knot.

It’s been two years since then. Carl’s just two months away from graduating and going off to college, and Judith’s just hit her seventh birthday. Things are actually looking great for everyone, considering the circumstances.

But now that Rick’s mind has delved into the very subject he didn’t want to, he’s worried. Sure, Lori had been in legitimate physical distress after the birth of their daughter, but it had still been just as surprising as this has the potential to be. What if they tell him Negan has to be screened for cancer? What if they tell him an important organ has just decided to start failing? What’s going to happen next? Rick honestly doesn’t know shit about medicine aside from the first-aid he was trained on during the police academy, so he’s stuck wondering.

Thankfully, Negan comes back before Rick can get himself too freaked out. It’s nice to see him without him being doubled over. The nurse helps him onto the stretcher, and once he’s there, he actually flashes Rick a smirk. One Rick can’t help but smile back to. It’s relieving, seeing that the medicine he’s been given is helping out, even if just a little.

“You look like you feel better,” Rick observes around a sigh.

“I do,” Negan laughs. “Whatever shit they gave me seems to be keeping most of it at bay. I got sick before the scan, but haven’t since, so I’m gonna consider it a fuckin’ victory.”

“Good,” Rick scoots in and leans against his husband’s shoulder from the little wheeled stool he’s using as a chair. This time, Negan doesn’t protest. When Rick throws an arm around his waist, he rests his hand atop that arm, and they both sigh.

“You still think it’s just a bug?” Rick questions when the beeping from outside their room starts to grow unbearable.

“I don’t know what it is,” Negan responds. “I mean, I’ve been throwing up all fucking day, so maybe my stomach’s just got a wicked Charlie horse or some shit.”

Rick frowns. “Maybe. I hope so.”

He feels Negan turn his head down to look at him. He doesn’t look back up. “…Babe, are you freaking out right now?”

Rick wants to tell him no, but he’s plenty aware of just how stressed he feels and probably looks. And if anyone’s good at reading him like a book after years of helping him rehabilitate, it’s Negan. So he lets out a sigh and nods against his lover’s shoulder.

“Yeah…a little.”

“A lot,” Negan comments.

“A lot,” Rick agrees.

So Negan sighs. “I’m not gonna die, Rick. Not until I decide it’s time to fuckin’ go. And right now isn’t the damn time.”

Rick opens his mouth to retort, but Negan cuts him off.

“Your wife didn’t have a choice, but if I bit the big one right now, I know I’d be facing her in the afterlife and probably getting the shit beaten out of me for leaving you alone. So you don’t have jack diddly splooge to worry about, alright?”

“I know,” Rick sighs, “you’re right. I know I’m bein’ ridiculous. Just…I let my thoughts go a little crazy.”

“That happens when you love someone enough,” Negan reminds him.

\--- --- --- --- ---

As it turns out, Negan doesn’t just have a bug. The doctor greets them a little under an hour later and informs them that Negan is the proud owner of a very hot appendix. After Negan teasingly thanks him and then gets hit by another wave of nausea, just barely getting his hands on an emesis basin in time, the doctor explains that he’s got appendicitis, and he’s going to have to go into surgery to get the organ removed.

Everyone’s so pleasant about it. Even Negan just nods along while the doctor explains that the surgery should go without complications and won’t take too long. But Rick finds himself nervous anyway. All the way up to the hospital room two floors up where Negan is admitted and waiting to be brought back down into surgery, Rick worries. Negan starts bitching about how their date night got even more shitty, and Rick honestly couldn’t agree more.

They’re looking at another hour before Negan goes down to get the procedure done. Apparently, they’ve already got patients in the middle of surgery, so Negan’s next on a short waiting list. Which has Rick even more uncomfortable, because what if Negan’s appendix bursts while they’re waiting?

Asking the doctor that didn’t provide much reassurance, either. At the very least, he’s thankful the guy didn’t lie to him.

Negan is incredibly attentive toward Rick, though. Even amidst his own crippling pain and resurfacing nausea, he’s thinking about Rick. He shows this when he nods to the light switch.

“Turn that off for me,” Negan suddenly demands. “And give me your phone.”

Rick cocks an eyebrow at him, but obeys. He digs his phone out of his pocket and passes it to Negan, and then he crosses the room and flips the light off. Assuming Negan wants total darkness, he closes the door.

By the time Rick has shuffled awkwardly through the darkness back to his spot next to Negan’s bed, the older man is holding his phone back out to him. It glows dimly with an almost greenish light, and when Rick accepts it and looks at his screen, he almost bursts out laughing.

Negan has taken a few seconds to install what appears to be a mobile app for an EMF reader onto Rick’s phone. They both know it’s not going to work, but Rick squints through the dark at his husband to see just what his angle is, anyway.

“What the fuck are you waiting for?” Negan insists with a wave of his hand. “Start walking around! We’re in a hospital, where people have _died_. Ask them questions!”

“…You’re not serious,” Rick tries.

“I’m dead serious, Rick Grimes.” Even in the darkness, Rick knows Negan’s smirking. “Whether my drop-dead-sexy hot appendix likes it or not, we’re getting our goddamned date night. Now get to ghost hunting!”

Rick just stares at the shadow of his husband through the darkness in the room, before he rolls his eyes and holds his phone out as if he’s actually trying to get a reading. He clears his throat. “Uh…is anyone there…? Negan, this room is full of electronics, this isn’t gonna work—”

“—Doooon’t caaaare,” Negan retorts.

Rick just glares at him and keeps asking whatever Negan expects him to find in their room questions. Things that he recalls hearing on various ghost hunting television programs, like who the person is, if they’re male or female, or if they’re angry. Stupid questions that sound even more stupid now that Rick’s the one asking them.

And it doesn’t fucking help that Negan’s sitting over there chortling at him like he didn’t orchestrate this thing his own damn self.

“Oh shit!” Negan suddenly exclaims, and Rick wheels around, because naturally, he’s fucking worried that his husband might be in pain or about to vomit again. He quickly rushes back to the other man’s side, but he trips over the leg of Negan’s bedside table and flops onto the tiled floor, just barely catching himself with his hands before his face can make contact with the ground.

Negan either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. “Right behind you, Rick! Didn’t you see the curtain move?!”

Rick’s on the verge of an irritated ‘ _are you serious right now?’_ , but then he realizes what Negan’s asking him for. He wants Rick to react dramatically like Zac does in just about every five minutes of his explorations on Ghost Adventures.

So he does.

Because he loves his husband too much for his own health, apparently.

“ _Shit!_ ” He exclaims, mocking fear, as he stumbles to his feet. “Did you see that!? It pushed me!”

“Oh fuck, babe,” Negan whisper-screams, “what’re you gonna do? Think you should get the hell out?”

“ _Hell_ , no,” Rick growls. “Asshole wants to push me, I’m just gonna push it back.”

And push it back, he does. He rears back dramatically, and then exaggerates a shove forward, as if pushing the spirit Negan apparently sees away from him.

“Damn, damn, _god-fucking-damn_ ,” Negan cheers from his bed, “you got it angry as shit now!”

Rick’s in the middle of flipping the ‘ghost’ the bird when a resounding knock on the door reverberates through the room. He and Negan both curse loudly, before the door swings open. They find themselves greeted to a pair of nurses in surgical scrubs. One of those nurses flips the light on.

“Did you find anything?” A younger-looking nurse questions with a smile on her lips. “We’ve got enough ghost stories here that we’d be surprised if you didn’t.”

“Oh man,” Negan laughs, “you should’ve seen it. Rick here was grappling with it.”

Both nurses can tell he’s joking, so Rick relaxes considerably. He shrugs his shoulders and brings both hands up. “Yeah…somethin’ like that.”

“Well, keep him at bay for us, will you?” The same nurse from before requests. “I want this room spirit-free when your husband comes back from recovery. Can I count on you for that?”

When Negan flashes Rick an appreciative smile, Rick’s heart melts in his chest.

“…Yeah. You got it.”

\--- --- --- --- ---

As it turns out, Negan’s surgery goes just as well as the doctor thought it would. Within six hours, Negan’s through his surgery and out of recovery. His bed is wheeled back into the room and he’s wide awake, grinning that usual grin of his. The nurse and an aide focus on vitals and assessing him for a few moments, but as soon as Rick can get back to his side, he does. An aide tells them she’ll be back in fifteen minutes to check his vitals again, and then they’re left to their own devices.

“Isn’t that a little excessive?” Negan asks with a few chuckles. “Every fifteen minutes?”

“Just for the first hour,” Rick reminds him. “I wouldn’t question it. Soon enough, you’ll get them out of your hair. How do you feel?”

“Like a million fucking dollars,” Negan responds, and when Rick laughs, he raises an eyebrow. “I’m serious, Rick. It hurts, but it’s a different kind of pain. I also don’t feel like hurling anymore, which is nice as fuck.”

“You’re on the jello diet for a while, though,” Rick reminds him. “Nothin’ too crazy until they see how you’re gonna keep it down.”

“I could eat the fuck out of some jello, if you ask me,” Negan replies around a smile. “I’ll worry about steak and potatoes and shit when I forget what my stomach feels like when it’s upended.”

Rick just shrugs. “I called the kids. They’re gonna stay with Maggie after tomorrow. You might have to share your bed with Judy when she comes to visit, though. She was a mess.”

“ _You_ were a mess,” Negan teases.

“I was _not._ ” Rick rolls his eyes. “I was worried.” He pauses for a moment, before smiling thankfully at his husband. “Appreciate you gettin’ my mind off of it.”

Negan’s smirk grows. “…You get rid of that ghost?”

Rick shrugs. “Look around you. You see any malevolent spirits?”

“Huh.” Negan indeed looks around. “I guess not…oh wait, there goes that curtain again!”

“Shut up.” Rick chuckles, shoving Negan’s shoulder affectionately.

“No can do, babe,” Negan quips back, before he cups the back of Rick’s neck and pulls him in for a chaste kiss.

Rick’s no longer feeling attention-starved after everything else that happened, but when Negan’s mouth is on his, he finds he can’t help but lean into the contact. He kisses back, and when they separate, he moves to assume a similar position to the one in the emergency room, with his head on Negan’s shoulder and an arm around his waist.


End file.
